


rock me all the time to the top

by SafelyCapricious



Series: mea culpa [2]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Abandoned Work - Unfinished and Discontinued, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Fic amnesty, Rock!fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-13
Updated: 2018-01-13
Packaged: 2019-03-03 18:27:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,613
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13346955
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SafelyCapricious/pseuds/SafelyCapricious
Summary: NOTE: THIS IS INCOMPLETE. THIS WILL NOT BE FINISHED. THIS IS A FIC AMNESTY FIC IN WHICH I SURRENDER TO THE FACT THAT I AM NEVER GOING TO FINISH SOME OF THESE PROMPTS.Two Rock!Fics that never came to be.





	rock me all the time to the top

**Author's Note:**

> Oh rock fic. I love you, but it has been too long. These were maybe going to be one fic, or two fics, or more! Who even knows. 
> 
> For those not playing along at home, this is under fic amnesty. This fic(s) is not done and will never be done. In an attempt to unclutter myself so I can, hopefully, write something new in this most ambitious year of 2018, I have decided to go through and declare amnesty for myself for a variety of fic sins. Starting with this one.
> 
> There will be more.
> 
> I hope you enjoy this even though it's not complete.

 Jemma doesn’t know where she is. She feels a bit like she did when she woke up after having her wisdom teeth taken out. There’s pain but it’s distant and then she can’t move and her world is panic.

 

That’s when she remembers the cell opening and the alien artifact grabbing her and – where is she? What’s going on?

 

She opens her mouth to scream and the noise echoes behind her eyes but she can’t actually hear it and the world is black – no, grey it’s all shades of grey and –

 

She manages what feels like the first breath in years and the tingling pain travels down her limbs and it’s the feeling right before you realize you have pins and needles and you know it’s going to hurt but it doesn’t, not yet.

 

She’s in the room, staring at…herself. She’s straightening her coat and dusting herself off and closing the glass containment cell and – smirking. Jemma is staring at herself and the one that isn’t her, or if it is it’s not right, is smirking and she gives a little wave and strides away.

 

Jemma tries to follow and she can’t.

 

The pins and needles she was expecting is about a thousand times worse and it pulls her under.

 

She wakes up, or whatever this version of waking up is called, gasping on the floor of the room. She can see through her own hands.

 

There’s still a rock in the cell – completely solid and stationary.

 

It only takes her pushing her boundaries nine times before she comes to the conclusion that she’s tethered to it – that she’s still trapped in there while something wearing her face is wandering around and –

 

She can’t feel guilty for what she doesn’t know is happening – she can’t feel guilty for someone taking over her body or making a body in her image or impersonating her or – she tests her limits again and it’s almost a relief when the darkness comes sweeping up.

 

Sometimes people come in to take readings. (This was supposed to be _her_ job – her and Fitz. It was going to be their first project back together and – she chokes on a sob that can’t really exist.)

 

Never the other her. Never Fitz.

 

She sees Mack once. He comes in and stares straight at her – and for a moment she thinks he sees her until she realizes that she’s leaning back against the center of rock.

 

It’s the only thing she can actually, physically, touch. (Well, other than the floor. And she has to wonder if that’s because she’s on level with the rock or out of some memory of not drifting through floors.)

 

It hasn’t gone liquid while she’s been awake. Not once.

 

She wonders if when she loses what amounts for consciousness is when it liquidates now – or maybe that it never does, with the other her wandering around. She wishes she could test it.

 

She has a lot of time to come up with theories that she can’t test. She also has a lot of time to forget those theories – some of them stay with her, but as she can’t write anything down, some of them disappear like smoke.

 

She starts to think that when she thinks she’s come up with a new theory it might, in fact, just be the ghost of theories past and – well.

 

Thinking like that doesn’t do her any good. So she starts to come up with other ways to keep her mind active that aren’t dwelling on being stuck.

 

After she’s certain she still remembers the entirety of the periodic table and can do long division in her head, she moves onto the taxonomy of as many species as she can remember.

 

There are always noises on the ship that she can’t place, and they’ve started to become background noise to her. So she barely notices when there’s an unusually long shudder.

She’s trying to remember all of her Latin, leaning against the rock, when they storm in. It’s HYDRA and she’s not even surprised – the rock is supposed to be some sort of weapon, after all. It’s too bad for them, then, that the weapon part is likely walking around wearing her face. But she’s kind of glad they don’t know that – maybe they’ll take it out of here, maybe she’ll see _sunshine_.

 

They fan out, looking very professional, and she almost wants to applaud for the show that they’re putting on that no one else can see.

 

She’s not surprised that HYDRA still exists, although she knows that Coulson thought they’d cut off all the heads not long ago – if they’re lucky only one more will have grown in place. What she is surprised about is seeing Ward walk through the center of the formation, dressed in similar tactical gear to everyone else but clearly in charge.

 

He stares right at her, but since she’s taken to leaning against the rock most often she’s not even concerned for a moment, instead she just watches him and wonders what’s going to happen.

 

“I thought you said this room was empty.” His voice sounds so different, even, now than it did on the Bus, and she can’t help but kind of marvel at it. That level of dedication to a cover is, after all, why he was considered one of the best at SHIELD. It’s just too bad he wasn’t, actually, SHIELD.

 

Her mind starts to wander to how the past year would’ve gone if Ward hadn’t, actually, betrayed them. It’s the sort of thought that she would’ve shut down with a vengeance before, well, before all this. But she’s got nothing but time and while before she would’ve been afraid of that train of thought leading to either more hurt or her own feelings softening towards him, well, it’s not like either of those matter much anymore.

 

The agents at his side exchange looks, with one of them sharply shaking his head. They’re all fairly good looking, though none have cheekbones like Ward. Maybe, she thinks with a twitch of her lips, that’s a criteria for joining this new HYDRA – must not out cheekbone the head. She snickers into her hand and Ward snaps a hand down. “Well? Isn’t someone going to subdue her?”

 

She blinks and looks over her shoulder, his earlier words finally registering as wrong. She cranes around to look behind the case her rock is in, as unlikely as it is that someone could’ve slipped by her. She takes a step to the side and Ward’s gaze tracks her.

 

She freezes, her nonexistent blood turning to ice

 

“Wait…you can see me?”

 

“No Simmons, you’re completely invisible.”

 

“Oh my.” Walks through glass case.

 

XXXXXX

 

There are organic rolling noises, she thinks someone might be trying to speak to her but she can’t understand their words, not yet.

 

She rubs her fingertips together and gets every sensation. She’s mesmerized by it and cannot stop. She sinks into the feeling, her ears able to hear each drag of skin over skin.

 

_You gave me a new body?_ she asks.

 

_We are sorry. We were excited and we destroyed the old one. This one is the perfect replica!_ she is answered.

 

She nods to herself. Or she thinks she nods to herself. It feels…different. Other.

 

She was gone from her body for a long time and she realizes why, because once it knew it had to make another body for her it obviously had to do it.

 

There is pressure on her shoulder. And then not pressure but feeling. So much feeling. It takes a moment to filter through and then another moment for her to remember how to scream – and then she does. It _burns_.

 

Darkness takes her.

 

When she wakes up she is somewhere else, but when she asks, _Are you there?_ she is still answered.

 

_Yes. We are here. We are always with you now._

 

And then, not with words but with feelings, she is shown what had happened. How a hand had touched her shoulder and because the owner of the hand wasn’t being honest about who they were they had tried to burn them away. A human body wasn’t created to burn others away, however.

 

Now she can.

 

If she wants.

 

She’s shown the burn on her shoulder in the shape of a hand, that it cannot be healed and it is sorry.

 

She nods.

 

There’s a murmur around her and after a moment it resolves itself into voices. She can recognize the voices before the words start to sound like anything but gibberish. There’s Fitz – she’s not sure if he’s yelling or if everything sounds like yelling now – and Skye and Coulson. After a long moment May says – something. Her voice is the softest, but still overly loud.

 

Slowly, very slowly, she starts to pick up words – they’re saying her name, and something about humans. Her head starts to pound and she stops trying to listen – she lets their voices wash over her instead. Pleased, at least, that she knows them.

 

She wonders for a moment where Ward is – he’s the only one she hasn’t heard and surely –

 

In an instant she remembers. There’s no anger, just facts.

 

She wonders, then, where Bobbi and Mack and Hunter are.

 

The voices get louder.

 

Even though she’s very purposefully not listening anymore the pain still spikes behind her eyes.

 

_Sleep. It will be better when you wake. We will wake you up if you need to move._

 

She is soothed and she sinks back into the darkness.

 

There are no organic noises when she next drifts back to consciousness.

 

She’s terribly aware of the scritch-scratch of

 

**Author's Note:**

> Hi! Did you not read the notes at the beginning, the notes in the summary or the tags? (Fair, I do that all the time.)
> 
> Well conveniently for you, this note is to tell you that no, you're not insane, this fic did just end there. Randomly. In the middle.
> 
> This is a fic amnesty fic, which is to say, I am just throwing it out to the universe because I need to get rid of some of the things I'm never going to finish just so I can clear up some emotional/mental/creative room to make some new shit. So here we go.
> 
> Happy 2018.


End file.
